


Family Man

by Ruta



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-24 06:22:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1594790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruta/pseuds/Ruta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first feeling was of strangeness, even without he opened his eyes. (The Family Man AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The first feeling was of strangeness, even without he opened his eyes.

The mattress was too soft, with squeaky springs and rough sheets to the touch. He turned heavily to one side and the entire structure moved as a huge ellipse of water.

 _What_ _the hell -_

Sherlock opened his eyes. He focused on the vague outlines of the knick-knacks in the room. A strange room: chaotic, full of paintings and photographs of a happy couple and two children with dark hair that stood out like splashes of color, a little blurry from the shadows created by the tents side by side.

He sat up abruptly. He had no idea where he was and even though some items had a familiar look, it remained a fact that he didn’t remember how he got there and why.

He made local mind, straining his memory to reconnect the puzzle’s missing pieces. At the same moment the room's door opened and a woman’s slim figure was silhouetted in the dim, thin light. The dust danced around her in a luminescent aureole. She carried an armful of clean clothes. She wore an old sweater in a strong shade of orange. Although she had much shorter hair, wrinkles at the edges of the eyes that he couldn't remember that she had ever had before, he recognized her immediately.

"Oh, you're awake," she said, crossing her eyes with his. They were always kind, of a warm and reassuring brown.

Molly Hooper came in with ease, bent over and kissed him on his lips absently. A light kiss, quick, sweet, absolutely real. When she pulled back, stroked his jaw and smiled as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Sherlock blinked.

Molly put the pile of clothes on a armchair and began to arrange them in the chest of drawers and in the huge cupboard, babbling of nonsense and turning occasionally to urge him to stop the frown and gloomy air, finally sighing because as soon as awake he always behaved 'like an old bear'.

Sherlock was disoriented as a few other times he happened to be in his life. He simply follow the movements of her, studying her and space, as he watched her walk around the room with confidence and security. If she looked older ( _fourteen, not fifteen years since the last time he had seen her_ ), the voice was the same and so the intensity of her gaze, the way in which she bent her lips looking at him, mid-way through a secret smile and the intimacy of a hidden thought.

She was older ( _impossible, absurd, but it was a reflection based on observable objectivity_ ), grayer and with the same noisy presence of mind that distinguished her, but she had never seemed to him more attractive and happy.

"The guys have gone out," she continued, apparently mistaking his silence with the bad mood of awakening, as she hung a series of cut shirts unmistakably masculine in the closet. "What about-" Molly stopped talking. She turned to stare at him with furrowed brows, as if she wanted liberate something he must have stuck in his eyes. "Sherlock, are you okay?" She asked after a moment, putting down shirts and going to sit on the edge of the bed.

She took his chin and touched his temples, unraveling with her fingers the knots of matted hair.

Sherlock let her examine him while he tried to make sense of the absurdity of what surrounded him. The whole situation was unreal. At last, with patience and firmness, avoiding sudden movements that could cause her the slightest discomfort, Sherlock pulled away her from him, grabbing her by the shoulders. Tiny shoulders, more than he ever thought they were. He felt distinctly the bones of the scapula, clavicle and humerus under the palm of his hand. _A hand with a_ _wedding ring._

Molly kept looking at him, confused. "Sherlock?"

He could have asked where he was, but that was pretty obvious. He could have asked why of all people she was there with him, but that was easily deduced. He could have asked of "the guys", but as far as the issue had sparked his curiosity, it wasn’t a priority. No, the priorities were the obvious signs of aging on his face, signs that the reflection of the mirror in the corner of the room put off as painfully, impossibly concrete. _Gray_ _wires behind the ears and on the nape, wrinkles at the edges of the mouth. The skin had lost about 6% of elasticity. A drop in view of 0.4, not 0.5 degrees. The joints stiffer and less mobile._ He had entered the stage of primary aging.

The truth is revealed, but it was so inconceivable that he was tempted to discard it. And yet eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, _however improbable_ , must be the truth.

"Molly," he inhaled deeply, without loosening his grip on her, hot and pulsating life and the smell of flowers and citrus and mint. "What day is today?"

She smiled, a smile of amusement, irreverent and accomplice. She shook her head and looked at him with tenderness and a feeling so clear that Sherlock was troubled. "Seriously, I should follow the advice of Mary and make you wear those boxer shorts with writing on the days of the week. Agree with losing track of the hours and the speech that time is relative, but excuses are not accepted." In front of his lukewarm reaction, she lost her boldness, became puzzled. "It is Holy Thursday, remember? You promised to bring the boxes to raising funds."

Sherlock wanted to scream or laugh hysterically because never, in any plane of reality or nightmare, he would never have dreamed of joining a demonstration of the kind. Instead he tightened his mouth into a grimace, bitter and angry for that state of things which still prevented him from understanding, deduct in full swing.

"What's going on? What's wrong?" The nervousness in her voice was palpable. She had sensed that something was wrong.

"I don’t remember. All this ... " Sherlock clenched his jaw, he contracted the muscles of the back, spitting out each word as if it were poison or acid. "I don’t remember anything, Molly."

He saw the confusion vanish from her face, the dreamy smile and cheerful air die and give way to concern. He saw her darken and watched as her eyes traced lines of an imaginary map on his face, coordinates of a road that now she could not find. The thing seemed to frighten her, hurt her as if he had shot her.

"What's the last thing you remember?" And as if only pronounce it procure her physical pain, she added: "How old do you think you are?"

"37," he replied promptly, without any note of uncertainty. "And Moriarty is barely reappeared."

Terror and horror made her eyes widen and she moved her lips to make a silent, uninterrupted 'My God', before getting up in a hurry. She hugged her bust and continued to look at him with a mixture of dismay and panic for what appeared to be an incalculable amount of time.

In the end she sighed, shook her head and suddenly seemed to grow even older. That kind of old age that has nothing to do with real age, but that kills the good memories to make room for despair and weariness of mind, a sense of discouragement. "All right," she said in a tone that asserted exactly the opposite. She forced herself to calm and to a fleeting peacefulness, but Sherlock watched her, as he always had done.

 _She was_ _devastated._ Know that he was the cause, sharpened the malaise. For once, he didn’t know how to act, what course of action to follow.

Seeing her take the reins of the situation transmitted to him a sense of confidence, relaxing. She remained Molly and she was the woman to whom he had entrusted his life not once, but twice.

"What we will do now is to call John. Together we'll get something." She spoke in bursts, tense expression and concentrated. "Then ... _God_ , I have to think about Minnie and Will," she paused, biting her lip and gave him a sad and determined look, so different from that of a few minutes before to give him a bleak feeling.

"I'm sorry," he said truthfully.

Molly sat back down beside him, took his hand and squeezed it gently. "We will solve it. Together we will solve it, you'll see. "

Sherlock let her comfort him, as she had always done since he had known her.


	2. Chapter 2

 

After having opened the curtains and let in the sunlight, Molly had left him with the ridiculous recommendation: 'Make yourself at home'.

Sherlock had rolled his eyes. Molly had smiled. And there, in that little exchange, was Molly’s greatness. She remained herself even in the worst moments, those in which there seemed no way out.

Left alone, Sherlock began to examine the room more carefully. It was a room far from ordinary. The bed, for a start. Over the years what could have happened to take him to get even consider the idea of sleeping on a waterbed? It was an infernal contraption, an unheard of discomfort.

He scanned the clothes in the wardrobe, divided into two zones, one that obviously belonged to Molly.

He ascertained a subtle but significant change of direction in her clothing. Still colorful shades and pastel colors, but with a different cut, more mature and elegant, and a multitude of jackets. In his zone, instead, he recognized the dear old Belstaff and his haute couture suits, but also amorphous green and blue sweaters homemade, ties, rubber boots and overalls gardening.

In the drawer of his bedside table he found a pair of eyeglasses that he put into the pocket of his dressing gown, a bound copy of ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, old newspaper articles and a subscription to the magazine of National Apiculture.

Here's what he had become.

The pictures and the ring testified his candidacy for father and husband of the year and now the drawer added other qualifications: old sentimental ready for retirement.

Those he initially had mistaken for pictures were drawings and watercolors of a Minnie by illegible handwriting, clearly inherited from Molly.

Sherlock refused to deign deepened looks at the photos. The children had his hair and Molly’s smile. That was enough to know for the moment.

 

* * *

 

 

The building ( _XIX_ _century with later changes_ ) was structured on three levels and clearly was a country house.

Sherlock counted four bedrooms and each one had a better bed of his own.

A room had been locked and it had taken a minute to maneuver with a hairpin found in one of the two bathrooms to open it. The room in question belonged to a girl of thirteen years at most.

If in the first bedroom ( _male,_ _nine years old, passion for biology and computer_ ) he was struck by the presence of a milk snake’s specimen, in this room - no window with small stone columns, but a bay window - Sherlock was struck by finding the skull of a cat resting on the mantelpiece, next to a worn edition of Frankenstein and a scented candle.

Downstairs he found an oak-paneled library, a study and a large workshop. He stopped in the hallway, in front of a half-open door, beyond which Molly's voice came clear and distinguishable.

Sherlock risked a glance.

It was the living room, undoubtedly the most lived room and the one in which the family spent time together.

Molly was engaged in a telephone conversation and body posture, tone, how restless and troubled she was as long as she waved her hands, all showed the commotion that in his presence she had tried to contain.

"Don’t you think I know that?" She asked with unexpected vehemence. She let out a little laugh of pure nervousness. "Of course I've already contacted Mycroft. By lunch I expect a rigmarole of doctors who knock at the door. Thank God, today the guys had planned the trip to the lighthouse at Beachy Head. Oh, yes, agree. Thank you, John." She rubbed her eyes, took a deep breath. Her hands were shaking. "Hello Mary. No, but listen. As I said to John, it isn't necessary that you rushed here. _Really_. Try to reason with him. It's useless since you would have had to be here tomorrow. I think I can manage my husband for a whole day without that World War III begins. All right. Thank you. I'll see you tomorrow in the early afternoon. Yes, Minnie is already here. She brought with her a classmate, a lanky boy who idolizes David Bowie. You'll hear their improvised concerts at three in the morning."

Another short pause followed by a low laugh, muffled and vibrant with a feeling that he recognized as pride. "Will behaves as usual. He has recently discovered an interest in amphibians, therefore wait to find tadpoles in bathtubs and newts that roam at large for the house."

On completion of the greetings, Molly sighed and hung up. She rubbed the back of her neck, closing her eyes. Her face was now a mask of wax: white and expressionless, her lips a thin line. "I know you're there and I know you've been listening," she said suddenly, opened her eyes again and giving him the ghost of a smile. "37 or 52 years, you remain a damn nosy."

Sherlock entered. No matter how much he had observed or deducted in every room. He remained an outsider, an intruder in that life, in that family. That house didn't belong to him more than the sky or a Stradivarius.

"You can get close, you know," she continued. "I don’t eat you."

The time had not changed her gentle nature. ( _But it was never been a question of kindness, right? The point was just that. It had never been kindness, but always love. And that was the only concession to prove it.)_

"You'd be a terrible bad wolf," Sherlock agreed.

Molly rubbed both her arms as if she were cold. Ridiculous. There were more than twenty degrees in the room. "I'm sorry for all this," she said after a moment.

Sherlock gazes at her with astonishment.

Molly gave him a hesitant smile, pointed to one of the chairs. "I suppose you'll have a bunch of questions. The inspection has borne fruit?"

Sherlock made a brief nod, he sat down.

"Not many as you hoped and not of the type that you hoped," she guessed, sitting down too. "You've barely discovered that you have two children, a wife, a country house in East Sussex and that you were considering the idea to dedicate to beekeeping. The gardening has had disastrous effects. You don't own what is called a green thumb, but you still managed to grow an entire crop of deadly nightshade. Of course, in the greenhouse's area that is forbidden to Will."

Sherlock clenched his fists in the pockets of his dressing gown.

Noticing it, the eyes of Molly had a tremor. "Does it bother you? The idea of me, children ... do you hate it so much?"

"Molly." Only hers name. He didn't said else.

She looked at him with that clear sight in which emotions were like goldfish under the transparent surface of the water: easy to recognize and study. _Fear_. She was afraid of being rejected. "What do you want to know?"

Sherlock remained impassive.

"Stupid question, you're right," Molly added with an air of contrite apology. "Everything. You want to know everything. But you have to be a little more precise. Before, you tell me that Moriarty has just returned. Well ... you and I have already talked about? We met up, or - "

"I returned to Baker Street for a few hours. House arrest."

"You're going to hate them," Molly stated. "You _have hated_ them," she corrected herself, frowning. "Gosh, it's all pretty damn confusing. In fact it has already happened for both, only that for you it is as if it had not happened yet or never happened. And you find yourself trapped here."

 _Trapped_. A decidedly appropriate term according to logic, but hateful so much for him as for her. "What happened when we met?" He inquired.

Molly had her chin resting on the palm of hand and tapped her cheek as a pianist who is doing practice. "I was so angry," she told him quietly, thoughtfully, staring into space blankly. "You were gone, without even a word. _Again_. And what hurt me most was knowing that everyone knew but me. Only I had been excluded from your goodbyes. Do you remember why?"

Sherlock avoided her gaze. Of course he remembered. For him it was still alive, fresh concrete. Something too recent to be a reminder metabolized. For her a decade had passed, but in his case it was a matter of hours, a handful of days. "Did you have hated me?"

Molly didn't answer.

Only when he had caught hers gaze, with so much passion and strength as to be almost violent, numbing, she remarked frankly,: "I believe I've never loved you more than at that moment, when you have explained to me why you had done it."

Neither of them looked away. Not even when a phone in a room upstairs began to ring. When it stopped, without she dared a movement, Molly's cell phone began to ring. She took it without a word. She read the number on the display and frowned. "Molly Holmes," she answered mechanically.

Sherlock had a slight shudder to hear that she appear herself in that way.

"Oh, Magda, hello. No, excuse you. It's just not a good moment. I have kids at home for the holidays and the family who will arrive shortly. No, in truth it is only a draft and-" She turned back to him, spelled out an 'I do soon’ and rolled her eyes, annoyed. She listened to the woman on the other side with a look decidedly annoyed. "We remain for the end of next week, then. Yes, I'll let you have a copy of what I wrote by Monday, in the meantime. Happy holidays to you too."

Sherlock raised his eyebrows. "Work?"

"Not really," she replied, running a hand through her hair.

He noticed that she didn't use dye to hide the first gray strands. They were rare, but visible and suited pretty good on her.

Molly smiled, suddenly embarrassed by that exam. "Disappointed with what you see?" She joked.

He didn't join the game. "You've never disappointed me."

The smile withered. She hid her face with both hands, sighed. "Seriously, you should stop looking at me that way, otherwise..."

"Or what?"

Molly put her hands in her lap, clutching them. "Otherwise I could kiss you." And she stared at his face, devouring it with her eyes, serious, determined.

Then, with an elasticity that reminded him a spring or the attraction of a magnetic field, both snapped towards each other. They kissed and Sherlock explored the full extent of her face with impatience and restlessness, while Molly plunged her hands into his hair with equal impetuousness.

He thought that he had been one step away from losing it all, the despair that had filled him thinking of her, on that bloody plane. Molly Hooper who was and would always be his biggest regret, an unattainable goal, as a sort of perverse hallucination in the desert, one of those that appear to be in front of you, and that there remain unapproachable. That what was he always thought in the past. 

"Molly," he whispered to her ear, hoarsely.

She kissed his neck, leaned her head against his shoulder. She was breathing heavily. "I know," she muttered, heartfelt. "I remember."

 _Obvious_.

His body responded with efficiency close to her presence. Automatic gestures, a sign that, even if his mind didn't remember, the body wasn't of the same opinion. It remembered these years of living in communion with Molly Hooper; recognized the body tight against his, her thin arms that held him; distinguished her perfume and the softness of her skin, the fragrance remained unchanged. And what were a few wrinkles, a few gray strands compared to the rest? It was exactly as he had imagined that it would have been if he had been allowed the indulgence of that weakness. Extraordinary in a frightening way. 

He rested his forehead against hers, seething from the inside. He kissed the tip of her nose.

"Our first kiss," she said. She seemed on the verge of crying, but there were no tears in her eyes, bright and fierce. Only sadness and love, a flaming glow of devotion.

If he had not already loved her as he loved her, he would have loved her at that time.

 

* * *

 

They spent the rest of the morning taking care of the chores that Molly had pending.

While Molly was watering the azaleas and rhododendrons, he scoured the entire garden and greenhouse. He recognized the cultivation of which Molly had told him, and once he had seen and stored as much information as possible, he returned to her.

He found her with the water pump, the sleeves rolled up on her forearms, a straw hat with a lilac ribbon around the dome that hung on her neck, not worn. The sun shone brightly on that part of the garden, filled hers hair, tied into a bun disheveled, of refraction similar to the fine filigree goldsmith's work.

Sherlock stared at her with narrowed eyes, in the flickering and golden shadows.

 _Tell me about_ _them._

He wanted to reach her and hold her until lost himself in her scent of flowers and in the limbo of unknown things that only with her became desirable, acceptable.

 _Tell_ _me of us_ , he wanted to say.

Know was a priority, necessary to begin to understand. Had he become a man worthy of her love, in time? How they were finished in this haunted house like that of a fairy tale, surrounded by meadows that stretched as far as the eye? How did he get to have two children, to build a family with her? How did he to survive the remote prospect, but realistic to put them in danger with his work? How he had come to accept the idea that the love for Molly could be enough to make him a better man?

He didn't realize that she had closed the water, meanwhile, that she had approached him, until she touched his arm.

"Mycroft has arrived," she reported. "I heard the car on the driveway."

 

* * *

 

 

Fifteen years had passed in the blink of an eye. The last time he had spoken with his brother, he had turned to him with a harsh tone of mockery. And the answer of Mycroft had been a sharp burst and merciless.

Molly was the first to enter the room and greeted him with a smile of affection that Mycroft replied with an incredible demonstration of equal and sincere esteem and attachment.

Sherlock watched their exchange pleasantries with his eyes wide open. It was typical of Molly search for the good and fond of, but not of his brother.

"Sherlock," Mycroft greeted him, raging with a stinging smile. "The sloppiness isn't right for a man of your age."

He grinned. "7 pounds and what are those that I observe? Crow's feet? The advancing age, or-"

"For heaven's sake! Could you please stop and behave as adults just for once?" Molly snapped.

Sherlock observed her, shocked and offended.

Mycroft, in contrast, didn't flinch. "My apologies, Molly," he said flawless. "Now, Sherlock, if you were kind enough to get dressed as is proper, there is a large group of neurologists who expects to do to you all the debts examinations and tests. Molly, I promise to bring him back in the evening, intact and with greater policy if I can."

"A lifetime of attempts combined and still no actual outcome." Molly smiled at him, reciprocated.

"Since when did you call yourselves by name?" Sherlock interjected, giving voice to a nagging, silly and unreasonable thought.

Mycroft's smile became mocking. "Ever since Molly has had the unfortunate idea to accept your marriage proposal, dear brother. A gunfight in the bank. I keep the shooting of CCTV cameras if you are interested in looking at them. Although the embarrassment could prove an incentive to not remember."

Molly flashed a look at both. "You have no objection to go, right?" Her eyes danced frantic on his face.

"Molly." He sighed, stroking her cheek to reassure her. Sure, the idea of the immense procedure of medical practices that he would have been forced to endure was anything but attractive, but he had some other choice or alternative? Remember wasn't just imperative, but a wish. "Put the children to bed," he spoke as a joke.

This definitely caused a laugh from her. "They will be so tired that they'll fall like flies." Molly smiled, then rose on tiptoe to touch his mouth with a soft kiss. "Don’t take too long, love. I'll wait for you."


	3. Chapter 3

Mary would have laughed, joked about the many opportunities that circumstance offered. _You can_ _reprogram him for the better. Let him make all those adjustments that you had discussed without getting anything._ Mary would have laughed, but shoulder to shoulder, sitting on the couch, she would close her wrist with slightly more force than usual. The smile wouldn’t have reach her eyes. There would have been a spark of genuine pain, sharing of hers. An eco powerful, recognizable, but that didn’t emit sound. Fire-fighter. Circumspect. Careful and thoughtful. Fire that burned without hurting.

John. Dear and good John. A soldier and a doctor. And already in his reactions, in the antinomy of his essence, was his humanity, what made him an irreplaceable friend. He would have done courage to her, providing reassurance with the wrinkled smile of his repertoire and with that expression crumpled, bittersweet and pure consciousness that was his own, that Molly had learned to appreciate, on which she can always count on.

She had treasured. Mary and John and Greg and Mrs. Hudson. They were his family. (" _There are_ _families that we are born in and there are families that we create in the course of life," she said a winter of many, many years before to Mary. "People with whom we are at our ease, with whom we feel free to express what is in our heart." Then she thought of Sherlock and smiled. "Or free not to do so," she added for scruple. “Free to be absurd, unreasonable and abrupt. My friends are my family and Mary, you're my friend."_ )

The kitchen was dark. Only the lights in the hood above the cooker were on. They were saving energy and is why they had hazy outline, breaking the uniform dark softly, like bubbles floating lights, abstract splashes of color.

Molly clutched the now cold cup. She was lost in the maze of her thoughts, watching the swirls of steam going up from the brew. A curtain of steam languages. Molly glanced restless at the clock. A quarter past midnight.

She picked up the phone and checked that she had not missed calls or new messages. No, the last message was dated at an hour before and belonged to Anthea.

 _The owl_ _and the barn owl are flying to the nest. – A._

She rubbed her hands, fiddling with the wedding ring. She laughed of herself, of her nervousness, but seriously, she was afraid to have a serious chance of going crazy or be on the way to a nervous breakdown.

It wasn’t enough a thirteen year old daughter - _Thirteen_ _years and ten months, Mom!_ \- on the verge of emancipate herself well ahead of its time. It wasn’t enough to have discovered that Wigg had concealed a crop of opium smuggled between her petunias, with the connivance of his nine year old son. It wasn’t enough to have the breath of Magda on the neck for to the delivery of her research project.

No, to the normal framework had to be added the extraordinariness of the Easter lunch to prepare, the mass arrival of friends and relatives, and _oh,_ _of course_. Her husband couldn’t remember the last fifteen years of married life. That, in fact, didn’t remember all their life together, had no memory of their children nor her as his wife. Her husband, whom, to all intents and purposes, was far from being considered as her husband.

He remained her husband only in the acts, by name, but not in practice. Her husband was mentally demoted to the period of bachelor, not only before they had started their relationship, but actually to the period prior to his conceived as permissible the prospect of becoming life’s companion of anyone.

Who had shared with her mid-morning coffee, that had helped to prepare hot cross buns, that she had kissed in the living room and from which she had been kissed with an anguish so preponderant to bring her back in time, to the first time that he had kissed her in that way, as to leave a mark of his desire on her, give consistency to his feelings.

He was Sherlock. Full-time consulting detective, tenant of 221B Baker Street, regular visitor of her morgue. Discovered recently murderess pro bono. Sherlock but not _her_ Sherlock. Not _her husband._

The idea of having to start from the beginning, having to go back over the path of those long and wonderful years, was shocking, terrifying and extremely painful. And not only for the desperate feeling of loss that accompanied it. It was something different. She was tired. Fifteen years. And to testified it there were her tired eyes and lightly myopic, joints that were beginning to falter, those same wrinkles of which she had been so proud ( _wrinkles_ _by smiles_ ). It was demoralizing that he had been able to see her so, old and different and gray overnight.( _Not that_ _the appearance had ever counted to him in the end. The strength of her mind, the constructive power of her intelligence: sensitive, insightful and polite. She that saw and heard and felt_.)

He didn’t remember. Perhaps he would never again. He couldn’t remember who he was.

 _Then make him discover it, girl. Remind him who he has become, what he has become._ But if he had not wanted to remember? If he had simply decided that this was not the life he wanted? _I cannot_ _force him to stay. I cannot._ She loved him too much to become his cage, to be a chain. Though the idea of losing him was harrowing, the idea that he came to hate her for having forced him to stay broke her heart.

Molly rubbed her temples.

Fifteen years old, she thought again, with suffering. Moriarty and everything that had following his return, which was derived.

Focusing, she could accurately reconstruct that period, such as an antique dealer that rummage in a flea market knowing exactly which object to look and where to find it. Only that this was filled with delicious days, localized images and one after the other, like a chain of pearls, were to accompany them dear faces and expressions, beloved words and voices, looks, smiles. Each one precious, unique, indispensable.

 _Where to start?_ _What could she say to convince him to stay? To give a chance to their family? How to persuade him to rediscover what in his current reality he had never been, but that in her, oh, he had been instead?_

The truth was that she missed him already. Terribly. The lack of him was acute and persistent. Having him beside, near and yet so remote and distant, would kill her.

But maybe she was exaggerating and inflating the situation, worrying too much. Sherlock had not appeared disgusted by his new condition, during the morning he had never given that impression. On the contrary, he had been more than willing to listen, ready to understand. A kind of sponge - absorbing information. Dazed by the exorbitant amount of novelty, but this was nothing new. He had never been the kind of man open to change. Not without reasonable and affordable conditions to support it.

Molly laughed bitterly.

God, what an absurd and horrible situation.

She couldn’t wait the next day. The night wouldn’t take advice or rest. It would be a long, endless night.

It didn’t matter that Sherlock would accept his identity, but it was vital that as soon as possible he becomes accustomed to the fact that for others, willingly or unwillingly, this he was, had been and would have been by now.

Love was not immutable, but its constraints were, yes.

 

* * *

 

 

Molly heard the car and before she knew it, she found herself standing in, running toward the door that opened to the rear.

She caught sight of her reflection in the wall mirror of the entrance and frowned. Her hair was matted for all the times she had passed through her hands; she had the face of a ghost, pale and dejected. She settled as best she could hair behind her ears, but for her eyes couldn’t do anything. They could not be settled so easily.

Sherlock walked in grimly, the collar turned up and an air of storm to follow him like a bloodhound.

Mycroft joined next, task and serious and. To respond to her glance of expectation, immediately giving her a small, but significant negative sign that made her heart sink at the foot.

Molly had no material time to welcome them.

Sherlock, already arranging of the space as best as he wanted with large and indignant strides, exploded at the peak of frustration: "An absolute and deplorable waste of time!" His tone was of profound impatience.

Molly heard Mycroft emit an unnoticeable sigh, saw him touch his forehead as if to arm himself of patience. It wasn't to be the first observation in this regard. "The exaggeration and drama is a stretch of your personality and we know it. Despite your views on this subject, however, now we have established with certainty that it is not a form of acute amnesia," he declared with quiet but firm tone. "No symptoms of brain trauma or hypoxia. Your behavior over the next few days will consider whether it is transient in nature or progressive."

 _Oh_. "It could be chronic?" Molly asked. A part of her wasn't sure she was ready to know the answer and the light of compassion in Mycroft eye's confirmed it.

"It might," he responded. "Clinically it looks like the only plausible explanation. Dr. Strauss is of the opinion that - "

"Dr. Strauss is an incompetent," Sherlock broke off him with a possessed look. "A goat and an ignorant," he added for good resolution. "I wouldn't put myself to his judgment more than I would trust my life to a damn -"

"You have no choice, dear brother.” Mycroft interrupted him. “Not this time."

"Of course not. I should follow to the letter your conscientious suggestions. A blessing of heaven can count on such a judicious brotherly figure." He flashed him a smile of burning derision.

"Don’t be sarcastic."

"Why not? The myself of fifty years has been completely tamed?"

"I would say that I am genuinely appalled, but I'm not. Anyway, my apologies, Molly."

"For what?" She asked. "Finally he stopped the apathetic expression. Still he doesn't remember, but at least he came to his senses."

Her reply, for a moment, seemed apparently calming the storm that raged in Sherlock's eyes.

Molly let his gaze investigate her face with brutal frankness and then, by quiet it had become, that flash of absolute dissatisfaction came back, more impetuous and clear.

"Do you like me to use a harsh tone? Do you like to see me upset by your nonsense?"

"I like you to be yourself," she replied, much calm as he appeared distraught. "This - gloomy aura of discontent and ill-humor – is who you are. The real you, of every day."

Sherlock's eyes widened comically, Mycroft feigned a cough and Molly mentally retraced his words. God, the phrase had come out completely different from what she had thought.

"I have to go." Mycroft, unexpectedly, interposed himself between her and her tricks to smooth out what she had said.

Molly turned to ask him to stay for a cup of tea and tempt him with a paste. Mycroft shook his head, flipping her intentions like the pages of a book. "As if I had accepted, Molly. Unfortunately, urgent business call me back in the capital."

"But you'll be here for Sunday?"

"Of course." He nodded and moved to leave.

And with her dismay, with a wave of panic and terror, Molly saw that Sherlock approached him and gave the impression of wanting to go with him.

Her deductions turned out to be correct when, with a voice and a vulnerable expression that wounded her even more, Sherlock asked: "May I come with you?"

If Mycroft showed himself disturbed or impressed by request, Molly didn’t care. "No," she cried and realized she instinctively grabbed him by the arm, as if to restrain him.

They both looked at her with surprise. Sherlock's eyes are pointed at the hands that were crumpling his jacket. Molly let go of her grip.

"You cannot," she continued in a low and controlled tone of voice, but still decided, without appeal. "I'm sorry, Sherlock, but you cannot simply go away and I don’t know - pretend that all this has been only an undesired parenthesis. I know that is not your fault and I know that you're uncomfortable and you feel disoriented, as if you had been catapulted into a sort of alternate universe. Who would not be, in your place? Were torn away from you fifteen years of memories and they are happy memories. And this is why," Molly heaved a vibrant sigh, drew herself up to her full height and lifted her chin. "That's why you cannot go. Not yet."

His eyes hardened, one corner of his mouth twitched.

Molly tried not to live it as a personal rejection, but it was so hard, so damn complicated try to forget along with him and not take for granted all those things about him that she had thought belonged to her, that would belong to her forever. With a stone in her throat, painfully, she got a stall, put her happiness in doubt. "Five days," she said. "I ask only this."

Sherlock probed her with a long, cryptic look. "Why?"

Molly opened her mouth, but Mycroft prevented her: "For children. Your children."

Molly nodded, despair and relief swept over her in a abnormal wave.

Sherlock weighed both, reduced to silence, and she could see by the way his pupils were dilated, by the pull of the back and by the laying of the shoulders, the jaw clenched that he was thinking.

Molly shook.

"Mina has already arrived, I presume?" Mycroft had demanded.

"Yes, yesterday afternoon," and she repeated what she had already told to Mary that morning."They went to the lighthouse at Beachy Head with Wigg," she concluded with a smile.

Sherlock's head snapped toward her with unexpected, unsettling energy. "You sent our children with Wigg? _Wiggins_?" he asked and looked at her as if she was a degenerate mother.

Molly pursed her lips in annoyance. "He is a trustworthy person. You believe in him. He's your assistant and the kids adore him. What's the point?"

 _The point was that_ _everything was so damn wrong, that's what!_ \- seemed to shout out his whole, frenzied and feverish figure.

Sherlock ran a hand through his curly hair, emitting a guttural sigh of exasperation. "Why five days?"

"Because after, Mina will depart," she said, wearily. She wouldn’t give to see how infinitely painful that departure was for her, because he wouldn’t understand, not now, not before she explained what she was talking about. Unless he had not already brilliantly deduced it earlier. “Will and I'll get along. We'll return to London with you if you will or otherwise I'll rent my old apartment. We kept it as a safe hiding place. We'll say that it is for a case."

"You should lie to them."

"You have to understand that there is nothing, _nothing_ I wouldn’t do for them. And if lie, pretend that all is well, will serve to protect them for the moment, I'll do it. You know how I love," she said and looked at him straight in face.

Sherlock gave her the illusion of a microscopic smile. "Yes, I know."

"It's a deal then?" Molly insisted.

"It's a deal," he agreed.

Molly relaxed and part of the nervousness accumulated during the day was dissolved, so the knots of tension. "Five days and then you'll be free if you want. No bond."

"Thank you."

"Don’t," she said with a grimace. "Don’t thank me," she clarified to his expression of confusion. "I hate it, let you go, but it's the right thing to do and I will not hold you in captivity or force you to do or be anything you don’t want. Only, try to remember this: even if it seems incredible to believe, you were happy, really happy. And I don’t say this for false modesty or God knows what ulterior motive. I want you to know. You are a happy man, a man who loved and loves. You are an early riser and an ingenious man. You're the man who married me and that I married."

She did not add 'and that I love.'

Sherlock never flinched.

Mycroft touched her elbow gently. Incredibly, he had witnessed their exchange as mere appearance. He hadn’t reserved the right to intervene, while remaining a compact and solid presence behind her, of supporting. Molly was grateful to him. "Accompany me to the door, Molly. I have to update you."

 

 

* * *

 

_What would he_ _have to thought?_

Sherlock asked himself that, returning from his thoughts and finding that Molly was still committed to talk with Mycroft. _What_ _they wanted him to think?_ \- Perhaps it would be truer to say. Or maybe not.

Not only he was married to Molly, but with a version of Molly much more insightful and who read his reactions with aptitude and ability. If she didn’t already know him in his present, she had had at her disposal fifteen years learning about him entirely.

And when she watched him with the gaze that had just meted out to him - clear and sad eyes, definitely aware of indistinct clamor in his head darting at the speed of a rocket, which seemed to say, 'I know how you feel, I know what you think' - a part of him arrive to accept that those years of lost memory were actually a shame, a waste.

Molly came back, pale and serious.

Sherlock observed her from head to foot. "You have made a pact with the devil."

"Nothing new," she sighed and fell silent, staring for a moment her hands as if she didn’t know what to do with them, toying with the wedding ring.

Something stirred inside him. "Molly, I-" he tried to say, but didn’t know how to proceed, what to say.

Molly looked up. "I know," she said simply. She handed him her hand, and Sherlock found himself tighten it in his, mechanically.

"Tell me about them."

If admit it had not cost him some stupid piece of pride, he would have admitted that his wasn’t a request, but a prayer, an invitation to be for him that support he had claimed for years that she wasn’t in front of the rest of the world.

 _The woman who_ _mattered the most, that had made the impossible possible._

Molly took him by the hand through the extraneous corridors - but not so much extraneous - of that house, _their house_. And in their bedroom persuaded him to sit on the chair. She sat down on the bed, cross-legged. Where to start?

"One thousand and one tales," she began. "You'd better get ready because I have one thousand tales and if you allow me, I will tell all of you. Each of them."

 _And now she_ _would also become his Scheherazade._


End file.
